Germany has one of the best higher education systems in Europe and degrees from German universities are world-wide recognised. Germany is also among the leading nations when it comes to research and innovation.

About the Initiative for Excellence

Since a couple of years, Germany is promoting its best and most competitive universities as so-called Eliteuniversitäten (elite universities) as part of the initiative for excellence (Exzellenzinitiative). 11 top universities got selected for their future-concept and receive additional financial support to further strengthen their international cutting-edge research activities. Besides, there are 37 so-called Exzellenzcluster (cluster of excellence). An Exzellenzcluster consists of a group of excellent researchers and scientists, working on a relevant topic for economy or society. As third part of this excellence initiative, graduate schools are financially supported in order to ensure excellent education and research support for PhD students.

List of the 11 German Elite Universities

Most recently, the following 11 universities have been selected to become elite universities and receive special support. Besides a winning future concept, they were awarded at least for one excellence cluster as well as one graduate school. Click on the universities to get more information and find out more about their offered programmes.

Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin)

RWTH Aachen University

Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (Heidelberg University)

Universität Konstanz (University of Konstanz)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich)

Technische Universität München (TUM)

Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen

Dresden University of Technology

Humbold University Berlin

University of Bremen

University of Cologne

Other awarded universities

Besides these nine elite universities, graduate schools of the following universities have been awarded by the initiative for excellence.